Chapter 12

Yaro stalked the woods. Her wounds were healed, but her fatigue nipped at her consciousness. That Yon-bound trap set by a court of fairies nearly took her toes off. All she wanted was a place to sleep near that town, not a bed of leaves over a spike pit. There was time before the zuyg-rise, so she could take her time exploring the wild.

That’s when she found him.

She sensed a lone aura, one unguarded and in deep thought. She approached, finding someone knelt before a shrine of Ah. The stone grew an age of moss and lichen, the hollow eyes meant to house the universe eroded to what some believe the end to bring.

He was the easiest target she’d had in a while. I hope he’ll have at least a few fuur on him, if not some valuables I can pawn off later or trade with. The larger tree shielded with secrecy, low brush further hiding her as she surveyed the area for any threats. She couldn’t finish before his appearance yanked her somewhere else.

He had strange coloring for a humi, his skin wasn’t its natural hue-lessness of white, grey, or black, but something that seemed like a hole in the universe with its peculiar pigmentation. His clothes too were so strange, somehow the most boring and unique thing she’d ever seen. He wore a single colored upper garment and a different color of lower garment.

Her shock at his body’s strangeness brought her aura out; it was too late and she’d been noticed. He stared with brown, not black nor silver but brown, eyes that sparkled at her. His fear froze in decision, if he should fight or if he should flee. Hope wanted him to choose the latter.

He, instead, called out to her, “hello?”

She hid herself and her aura fully out of view. The light dimmed with the falling of the sayk band, she would not be found. Should I rush him? I could easily tie him down with my flames. Or, I could break his neck. This far in the woods, no one would find him for a while, long enough for me to be long gone.

He called out again with a lilt of curiosity, “please come out. I feel- my eyes must have been playing tricks on me and I thought I saw something very weird on you.”

She wasn’t wearing her cloak. I can’t risk having my cloak rip on a thorn or keep me from a fight or flight in any way. I suppose the best course of actioun would be to show myself. Then, I can use that shock to rush him down. So she did, emerging from the tree with wings fully spread.

It worked, his eyes grew wide and she dashed at him. Her legs burned as she toppled him. She found herself holding back, she too was shocked at him. For her, his aura that permeated the immediate area with callousness dimmed in fear. In its place was not disgust as she anticipated, but shock and a bit of excitement.

He fell to the ground with a thud and a shout. He groaned in pinched eyes, “what are you?”

She didn’t respond, instead rifling through his clothing for any valuables. Every sinew braced to snap his neck if he tried anything. In his belongings was a leather tome of sorts, some metal trinkets, and a mirror. His eyes caught her and she stopped. “What was that for?”

She let the items puff into smoke and trail into her holder. She stood up saying, “don’t try to follow me. I’ll kill you.”

She backed away, not losing eye contact. She wanted to make sure he wouldn’t chase her or otherwise try to attack, she thought to herself. There was no denying there was something about him that was alluringly curious.

“Please don’t go,” he said timidly, but unnervingly sincerely.

She took a deep breath. There must have been some kind of glamour on him, she wouldn’t be tricked so easily. She continued, looking back every now and then to make sure she wouldn’t trip. He began to get up. “Stay down!”

“Okay, okay. I just- please- are you real?”

She stopped. Maybe he wasn’t trying to trick her at all, maybe he was just simple. She retorted, “are you real?”

“I think so. Your costume, those horns look like they’re really coming out of your body. It’s really…” He sat up, “how long did it take you to make that?”

Yes, he was simple. “This is not a costume.”

He visibly swallowed. “So, those horns are really growing from your head?”

A low blow from this cretin to mock her like that. She had a mind to come back at him and put a burn around his neck. “And you, what kind of dye did you use to have your skin look like that?”

“Dye?” He shuffled nervously. “This is how I’ve always looked.” He looked everywhere but at her. She supposed that was the most reasonable thing about him. He continued, “what are you doing alone in the woods, it’s dangerous this time of year. The bears have just woken up and they’re looking for food.”

He must have assumed her inept. It was one of those very bears that wounded her earlier that day. “I have no fear of bears. What are you doing alone at this shrine? Are you not afraid of the bears?”

“Shrine? I don’t see a shrine. I just come here because it’s peaceful.” He paused in thought. “I come here to get away from everyone. As for the bears, I have some bear repellent as well as a tranquilizer.”

“Why didn’t you use that on me?”

“I don’t think it would work on a dragon. Not that they’re real.”

“A drake?” Yaro stepped towards him. Ridicule was nothing new, but never an air of respect. Her palms burned with hatred. “You think I’m a drake? You don’t see that I am not completely one, that I am a filthy hybrid? Do you not see I am born of both drake and humi?”

“Well,” He said looking to the ground, “I’ve never seen anyone like you before. And if you say those horns and scales are real, then you look like a dragon to me.”

“And I suppose you’re a muzoval, fully beaked and tentacled,” she spat.

“I don’t know what that is. I’m sorry if I was rude. I’m just… I feel like I’m dreaming.”

“You may soon find yourself dreaming.” What am I doing? This imp isn’t time. I should leave. She emanated rage, enough so even the most dull would understand. “Tell me, does this feel like a dream?”

“Not really.”

“So I’m real, you’re real, and you’re about to be real sorry you pissed me off.”

“No really. You, well, I can show you pictures. I’ve truly never seen a dragon, excuse me, one like you before in real life. I don’t think you’re supposed to be real, or, maybe.” He tripped over his own words like a fool before a king who was one step away from beheading. “Just come with me. I think I have a book at my home with pictures of dragons. If neither of us are dreaming,”

Against reasonable judgment, she followed him out of the woods. The daze brought with it the sounds and smells of a road: dust and walking. Cloak and mask followed in shadow. The trees parted for buildings, then restaurants, then complexes. Soon, she’d been taken back into the city, a strange sensation; usually it was the other way around. No one looked their way as they weaved from cobblestone to black-street alleys, walking all the time in the brightest lit areas. They passed homes and verity stores, each block unique in that the buildings were not in the exact same location. She felt almost lost before they reached his complex. With a blue flame, he opened the front door to a group housing she hesitated on entering. The air inside was bare and warm. He let her in and they climbed the stairs to a modest apartment. For all Yaro knew, she allowed herself to be brought to the den of beasts, she must have been the fool.

She didn’t know why then and never will know why she didn’t just leave.

“Here,” he said as he brought out a tome titled, “Anatomy”. He turned it to a page on the anatomy of drake. “Here, see, it’s a story about a dragon locking a princess away in a castle and a brave knight who rescues her.”

She looked at him numbly. “No, it’s not.”

They continued like that for a while. Back and forth they would point something out and the other would say something to the effect of, no, that’s not how it is. Slowly, they both came to the realization that they did not perceive the same world. 

Yaro would see a solumkerd with a green coat while he would see a colorful humi in a green coat. All of the civilized creatures, according to him, were the same humi but with color. Then, the bombshell dropped, he did not perceive auras nor was he able to manipulate the world beyond the extent of what he could touch with his physical being.

He offered her to stay with him for the night. She could sleep on his couch. The topic change was too abrupt and Yaro found herself acquiescing without thought. She would later stay up the entire night staring at him, waiting for him to spring his trap. Escape nearly didn’t need thought put to it; her curiosity at their perspectives consumed her fully.

The danger never came as he woke to her staring at him. They spent most of the following day discussing the differences they still experienced between their perspectives. 

“And that man down there, the one in the green shirt, he’s a humi too?” Yaro asked.

“Yeah, black hair and purple lipstick.” Ellis pointed to the sign the man walked under. “And that’s a neon sign that says ‘Twilight Tavern’”

“I don’t really know what neon is, but the cloud does say ‘Twilight Tavern’.” Yaro brought her hand to her cheek. “It really looks like it’s all different. The people, the structures, even some text. But why aren’t you like that?”

Ellis closed his eyes in thought. He emanated frustration and contemplation like a newborn. “and it’s not just that, you seem to have magic in your world.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you can do things that aren’t possible for me. Those flame whips you said you had in the forest, they were just whips for me. But it was so strange at the time, I chalked it up to you being... well, different.” Yaro let her whips manifest very cool. Ellis’s eyes widened. “Right there, you didn’t have those whips in your hands a second ago. And they’re not a flame for me, but I didn’t see you pull them out...”

“It’s not really magic,” she said, putting the whip back, “It’s just science. The enchantment on my tattoos-"

“Here, let me show you,” he interrupted. Yaro nearly broke his wrist as he brought up a tiny scrying smoke pyramid in his hands. The image of two ballerinas appeared in the smoke. “On my screen, it’s two people fighting with magic, what do you see?”

Yaro explained the difference, and found a difference in how that scrying smoke seemed to shift into different devices depending on what he used it for. One point it was a speech murn, the next an orb. For him, it was always one device.

“To Yon with this,” Yaro shouted. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

“What’s Yon?”

“The place where you go if you die an evil life?” Yaro balked before catching herself. Of course he wouldn’t know.

“Oh, so it’s part of your faith. I’ve always wondered if any of it was true. I always felt like there was something out there. But I never believed in what I was raised with.”

“Neither do I,” Yaro found herself admitting. She hunched over, “I mean, if we exist in multiple worlds, in a way, how can we say where we go at all? And that gorgon, the one you saw as some pet, how does intelligence play into the divine if it’s not even consistent?”

“And what about eating animals? Would I be eating a creature who could talk for you?” Ellis shook visibly. Yaro looked at him. Why would he care? “I don’t know what people see you as. What if you’re a cow for them and they would eat you?”

The laughter came heated and fast, filling the room like a hot air balloon. “Eat me?” She said between fits of coughing, “why would anyone want to eat a hybrid?”

“A... Hybrid?”

The pause stuffed Yaro’s laughter back down. That pause, was he considerate of her, questioning a probing question? “Yeah. A hybrid. Banned from ever entering Tukk, a disgusting thing that nearly never makes it through birth, doomed to be heated by both sides of the war? You know, someone like me. The worst of the worst. A drake and a humi...”

It may have been courtesy as Ellis grabbed on to a different topic, letting Yaro pull herself away from the spiral she did not feel like falling into again. “The War? You mean you also had a Great War that spanned the globe?”

“Yeah, actually, the Great Ghm and Valth War. I’m surprised that we can’t have the same fruit, but we can have a similar way to end a lot of life.”

They laughed together. Ellis did not probe deep again that night, instead asking her favorite color. That hadn’t crossed her mind in a long time, so she thought. Red. More shallow things she hadn’t thought much of favorite foods, hers were pears, and things they liked to do, she liked to polish things to a luster.

Then the zuyg and its shimmering stars rose again before the end of their conversation was anywhere in sight. He cooked while they talked, then offered her a meal. She took it with a slight laugh. He may be trying to poison her, but he would be in for a rude awakening as most poisons had no effect on her. The food, some sort of meat stew, was actually pretty good. At least, better than the scraps restaurant would throw out back after the day had completed. She’d scarfed hers down before he was a few spoonfuls through.

He did it again, he offered his couch for the night. Not having anything else to do, she took the offer. This time, she did not watch him the entire night, laying awake on the couch in deep thought. Thoughts of too many things assailed her, trying to collect her thoughts on all the matters frightened. She next found herself waking up to the smell of cooking bacon.

They talked again, and he offered his couch again. And again. And again.

The following day, he apologized as he had to go to work. He was a ranger, a kind of person that surveyed the surrounding wilderness for any persons in need of help and to keep an eye on the wildlife. To her, that sounded like an intermediary. Like a lot of things, that probably was the case in her perspective, since many things had almost-reflections. A screen that showed distant events was a scrying smoke for her. Clocks existed but with gears for him, rather than trapped shadow. There was a lot.

They had a few more long battles of wills against their perspectives before they found that they both were truly living different realities. Then began the long discussion of not only what each other experienced, but why they experienced one another as they were in their own realities.

That was after he had returned from his work. It turned out he was simple, but not in that initial idea of un-knowledged. No, he was simple in that he was trusting. He let her stay in his home while he left for a full day’s work, unattended. They had only known each other for a few days, yet there she sat in a fully furnished apartment. She was almost boggled at the amount she could swipe and how long she could live off of it. But she didn’t take anything major. Instead, she would take a knife from the kitchen, a book from deep in the bookshelf, and use them to hunt and entertain herself when hungry and bored.

He would return, and they would get back to talking. That idling thought of leaving slowly left as he accommodated her. She moved from a couch to a bed he had bought for her. She would bring home kills of things she hunted in the woods as well as trinkets she’d swiped; he stopped asking where they came from after a while. He would cook her catches for the both of them, always incorporating his daily-made bread into the meal. And with the meals, he would present her with a  wild flower he’d found that day. She felt an urge to take them, to keep them with her, to hoard them. Her ability to worried, she’d not been allowed to at the thief's house. It was on her mother’s side to hoard, and she’d always suspected her particular hoard might have been flowers. It was almost unbelievable she’d have one. She’d probably end up destroying it, as she did everything else. Flowers were flammable, after all.

She’d stayed so long, she’d learned the name of the town, Geva. It wasn’t anything special, it was just where she ended up in her years of wandering. In fact, it hadn’t been since living in Natrai’s house of thieves that she’d stayed in one place for so long. The fear of being run out never left her, but she didn’t worry about it so much as she sequestered in his apartment.

She learned more about him, how afraid of everything he was but how he still worked as an intermediary, facing dangers every day. She divulged a few things about herself, how the world she experienced viewed her as a monster. The part where she agreed she was a monster was purposefully left out. The words that left his mouth were about how amazing and interesting she looked. Those words were always met with a change of expression to sincerity. He couldn’t believe both, and she knew she was hideous. But, it felt nice to hear the compliments nonetheless.

The season changed and she remained with him. After living so long as a vagrant, it took her all that time to begin a daily routine. She would see him off every morning after sharing breakfast. She didn’t need to eat as much as him, so she would often just have a single slice of bacon for most of the week before she really got hungry. Then, she would review the apartment for any differences from the previous day. Then, she would take a tome and read. Tomes about science, books of anatomy, herbology, alchemy, and rune-smithing were the most common. For him, they were unreal stories. Then, she would leave, making sure his apartment was locked.

She’d slip in the darkest alleys to the market. She’d browse for a bit and, if anything caught her eye, would snatch it. She would only take one or two things a day, her years of experience keeping her from being caught. She knew it was risky, but she found days without taking something too free of excitement. Then, she would make for the woods and begin hunting. She’d often gain a few scrapes from ambushes of semi-intelligent creatures or creatures with powers she did not account for like growing spikes. But, her tongue would heal her and the amount of food she in-took kept her fit.

She’d come home as the sayk began to fall behind the horizon and the zuyg would rise on the opposing side of the world. They would talk over dinner, sleep, and the next day would repeat.

That was but for every sixth day. Then, he would not have to go to work and they would go for walks in the woods. He tried to get her to take walks through the city itself, but she vehemently opposed that as any attention would lead to dire consequences.

It is from these walks out of the city that they discovered one important feature of their encounter. It was when he was stopped by someone he knew, someone from his occupation. They talked while she tried to keep from making eye contact, acting like a prop in the background. Anxiety whirled inside her, edging at her skin ready to burst forth. She felt that familiar tingle in her legs as she prepared to run. She felt her tattoos prickle in her palms. She’d never shown him her flames, so she still had it as a surprise if she had to fight back.

But no, instead they conversed in the strangest way possible.

“Hello, how’s your home studying going?” he would say.

“Hello there, are you looking for a protector? I’m an intermediary, I can’t help you.” his giant humi friend would say.

Then he would respond, “Maybe you should talk to her. It’s kind of her thing to help you out with that.”

And his friend would respond, “Oh really? I’ll be sure to let my superior know. Thank you.”

She listened a while longer then made the realization herself that the “friend” did not know who he was, but had some kind of glamour cast on him to act in a way a friend would. After discussing the interaction with him on their walk, they decided to test some things further.

He had a few more conversations before her. Each time, she prepared herself, looking for the best route to get away. Through the conversations, they learned that he did not have a past in her reality. She seemed to not be in his reality either, but she also did not live in his town, so people would not know her.

The seasons circled back around, and it was prime weather to walk in with the sights of flowers and the smells of new growth. She loved their walks in the woods, and even allowed for them to walk in the city. He had grown accustomed to drawing attention away from her, when needed… When he noticed.

One one of the wood walks, he brought her back to the shrine they met at. The depiction of Ah did not change in the least. He turned to her, and smiled with a warmth she’d grown to appreciate. He knelt before her and produced a small box. She stared at him, it must have been one of the many weird things from his reality. He opened the box to a ring. Her breath left her and refused to return for a moment. The ring was gorgeous, a silvery green that sparkled like the night sky.

“Will you marry me?”

“What is marriage?”

He laughed openly. “It’s when we promise to spend our lives together.”

Yaro laughed too, so hardily the warmth became tangible around her, singing the grass. “Of course not, but I’ll stay with you for a while.”

“That’s good enough for me,” her Atho, Ellis, said.